On the trail of Gates’ Lexus

Is this Bill Gates’ former car?Several bloggers havepostedlinks in recent days to an eBay listing seeking at least $20,000 for what the seller describes as Bill Gates’ former maroon Lexus LS-400. Looking back at old newspaper reports, there’s no dispute that Gates drove such a car in the early 1990s. But is the one for sale really the same Lexus that Gates drove?

In the process of putting together an item about the car for Monday’s Insider column in the P-I business section, I spent quite a bit of time last week trying to figure out the answer to that question — talking to the current and past owners, running a vehicle history report, checking property records to determine Gates’ former address, calling the Washington State of Department of Licensing, and even asking Microsoft if Gates himself might be able to take a look at the listing and weigh in. (He wasn’t available.)

And the answer, at least for now, is that it’s not clear. On one hand, it may, in fact, be Gates’ old Lexus. The current owner and the Oregon couple that owned it in the late 1990s said they previously had no reason to believe it wasn’t his former car. But as noted in this morning’s Insider item, there’s something strange about the two documents that have apparently been used for several years, and in multiple sales, to link the car to Gates.

To be more precise, there are two strange elements in those documents. One is the fact that the letter of authentication, bearing what appears to be Gates’ signature, refers to the company by the name Microsoft Inc. — not Microsoft Corp., as it is known, and was known at the time. The other is the fact that the certificate of title puts his name as “Gates, Bill” — whereas most other formal records of that type, such as real estate deeds, use Gates’ full name, as in “Gates, William H. III.”

As noted in blog posts by others, the listing was temporarily taken down a couple days ago, but it’s back up now under the link above. In addition to speaking with the seller, Temple University instructor Bill Mooney, I also spoke with his daughter’s boyfriend, the person handling the online sale, who said it came down because of a technical problem not related to any questions over the authenticity of the car’s connection to Gates.

To be clear, the inconsistencies in the documents are merely red flags at this point. My other efforts to get to the bottom of things before the holiday weekend were inconclusive. If it is a hoax, it appears to have originated before any of the current or past owners I spoke with, unbeknownst to them. But to reiterate, it could end up that it’s actually the same car that Gates sped around in with Windows 95 on his mind.

Rest assured that I’m in full Hardy Boys mode at this point, with a level of curiosity completely disproportionate to the actual significance of the situation. I’m going to keep digging and hope that a couple other promising leads come through later this week, answering this question definitively. Stay tuned …